Monday, February 18, 2008

Pettitte 'n' The Bud

In this video, we are taught by Silver Spoons star Alfonso Ribeiro about confessing. This was made by the Mormons. I'm not a religious person at all, but this commercial had it right. If you do something wrong, fess up. But here's the key. You'll notice that the boy in the commercial admits to breaking the window right away. He didn't wait until Mr. Robinson went back, checked the surveillance video, saw who did it and then outed the kid to the world. There was no "Robinson Report."

In this 2006 video, we hear Andy Pettitte--who'd taken HGH twice at that point--saying all this stuff about god and how he's going to heaven and his family loves him because he did all the right things in life. So he was lying. To god, his family, his fans, and everybody else. He didn't confess until after he was caught.

What I'm getting at here is, This guy's gonna face the fans very soon. And I'm wondering how they will react. The way I see it, the order of who should be praised goes like this:

1. People who never cheated.2. People who cheated but admitted it before they were caught.3. People who cheated and after they were caught, admitted it.4. People who cheated, got caught, and still don't admit it.

And remember, Andy is actually in group 3a.: People who cheated, then were caught, then admitted to SOME of it, then later admitted to the rest (meaning he lied to investigators the first time), and also didn't consider what he did "cheating," even though he did admit to taking HGH.

So what's the call? Yankee fans will cheer him. He's "one of their own," and they've securely Saran Wrapped themselves in the "everyone else was doin' it" excuse. Even Stammerin' Hank Steinbrenner has admitted that the Yanks of the late 90s were on drugs, but so was everyone else, so they would've won the four championships anyway. So, just to get things straight, the Yankee rules of classiness are: 1. No hair below the collar. 2. No facial hair other than that ever-popular trend-setter of the day, the mustache. 3. IT'S OKAY TO CHEAT AS LONG AS EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT.

But I've gotten a little off the subject. The point is, I'm really getting a feeling of "the guy's classy, he told the truth, cheer him" coming from the Red Sox fan/media side of things. I'm just saying, consider what I've written above, along with the fact that he's a Yankee, for god's sake. I mean, with Giambi, Yankee fans felt he "manned up" and cheered him, whereas Sox fans continued with the steroids and Balco chants. But does Pettitte, by virtue of being a "nice guy"--which, I admit, he has always seemed to be--get off the hook? It just seems odd that the way to be a Yankee and get cheered by Sox fans is to cheat, get caught, then admit it, and then come to Fenway Park still in a Yankee uniform. Why not show that, Hey, you were our enemy already, now we found out you were cheating on top of it, so now you're even more of our enemy? If you're gonna cheer Andy, why not cheer every Yankee who never cheated? And we certainly wouldn't want to do that.

I'll give you this. I'd be fine with his years of being a good guy making it so Red Sox fans just say, Eh, whatever, and don't boo him nearly as loudly as A-Rod/Giambi types. But to hear him cheered would be a little nauseating. No, a lot nauseating.

There is a school of thought that "anyone who helps take down Roger is okay." Andy was kind of the Don Zimmer-to-George Steinbrenner in a way. Meaning that you don't like either guy, but if one's being mistreated by the other, you feel for the other. Not quite the same thing, but at the very least, we're seeing Roger as this stubborn liar, and Andy as a dude who (eventually) decided to tell the truth. I just feel like I want to boo Andy less than Roger, not cheer him. And maybe that's a "classy" move by Andy today to not "snitch" on Roger, but how is that a show of honesty? I guess it's a fine line, and people today, especially males, it seems, have this "respect facade," where they go to great lengths to stand up for their friends. But to me it just looks like a way to make yourself look good, meaning you really care more about you than you do about your buddies anyway.

Andy says, "From the bottom of my heart, I know why I did this. I didn't do it to try to get an edge on anyone, I didn't do it to try to get stronger, faster or to throw harder. I did it because I was told that it might be able to help me."

He was just trying to heal from an injury ... doesn't that give him an edge over someone trying to heal from an injury without using HGH? Wouldn't that make him stronger, faster than without the illegal substance? He used it for good and not evil? And he still says he doesn't consider himself a cheater. What a joke.